Adobe startles Wall St with Q4 sales climb

Time to pump more money from cloud

Just one month after Adobe confirmed it was axing around 7 per cent of its global workforce and backing away from its Flash Player software on mobile gadgets, the company has reported final quarter results that surprised Wall Street.

It pulled in revenue of $1.1bn (£0.7bn) for the three months ended 2 December, up 14 per cent from the same quarter a year earlier. Adobe notched up total sales for the year of $4.2bn compared with $3.8bn in 2010.

Net income stood at $173.7m (£112m) for the quarter. Digital media and marketing performed well during Q4, the company added.

Adobe said it expected to see revenue of around $1.025bn to $1.075bn in its first quarter of 2012.

Profit excluding items for Q4 was 67 cents per share.

Wall Street responded positively with shares up 3 per cent at $27.26 on Nasdaq in extended trading.

Adobe confirmed in late November that it was slashing 750 jobs across its enterprise licensing biz and focusing on HTML5 work as part of a restructure to pump up its digital media and marketing software. ®